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Joe Soucheray: We have to acknowledge the evil in our midst

By Joe Soucheray

Posted:
08/24/2013 06:21:46 PM CDT

Updated:
08/24/2013 06:21:55 PM CDT

Joe Soucheray

The East Side, as a large geographical chunk of St. Paul gets called, certainly has changed. There were always fights and skirmishes and territorial disputes, but they were meaningful insofar as they settled something, a high-school rivalry, a battle of the bands, a hot-rodded "American Graffiti'' competition at Jerry's Drive-In.

In my history, I cannot think of anybody getting beaten to near death for no reason at all, on the East Side or elsewhere in the city. Ray Widstrand, 26, was beaten nearly to death Aug. 4. He was set upon and viciously attacked, kicked, punched and rolled by feral youth who have no conscience, no moral foundation, no ethical clarity.

I have heard enough between the lines about the thugs to stand firm on my claim of no conscience.

The other day in broad daylight, three people were shot in North Minneapolis, including a 14-month-old.

North Minneapolis and the East Side are misnomers. North Minneapolis is as varied and as expansive as any another section of that city, but to call it the North Side puts it in a box that means gangsters.

And the East Side of our town stretches from Battle Creek to Lake Phalen, but the East Side in St. Paul never meant trouble. It meant blue-collar and factory jobs and taverns and Legion Halls and Polish-American clubs and the Crupi-Hughes-Shattuck line at Johnson High School.

It never meant beatings to near death. For no reason.

We have evil in our midst. If evil can descend on Payne and Minnehaha, it will descend anywhere and has.

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A 22-year-old Australian, Chris Lane, in the United States on a college baseball scholarship, was murdered last week in Oklahoma. No motive other than boredom was provided by the three teenaged principals involved.

"The boy who has talked to us said, 'We were bored and didn't have anything to do, so we decided to kill somebody,' " Duncan, Okla., Police Chief Danny Ford said.

They saw Lane out jogging. They shot him. For no reason.

I keep foolishly writing "no reason." There being no reason is what constructs the evil. Of course there is no reason, because evil cannot be reconciled.

This behavior is as terrifying as terrorism. As vague as terrorism is, we at least know we are at war against it. We take off our shoes at airports. We get screened for metal objects. We are supposed to report suspicious behavior.

But we don't acknowledge that we are at war with evil perpetrated by our own children who are untamed and so devoid of reason that they shoot people or stomp them.

My generation -- those of us who went to high school on the East Side -- are puzzled by this, and I know what most of us thought after hearing the news about Ray Widstrand: This could not have happened. This absolutely could not have happened back in the day. Why, it would be especially true that this could not have happened on the East Side, precisely because the East Side was defined by a sense of primitive justice that meant you policed your block, your neighborhood. You knew the rules, and if anybody stepped out of line, it got taken care of.

A wild gang of feral youth could not have stepped outside to watch a couple of women fight and then turn on an innocent bystander who happened to be walking by. That could not have happened because somebody's dad would have deservedly cracked a few heads.

Today we think that sounds harsh and judgmental, so we build a few more rec centers, and we preach the meaningless mantra of inclusivity and diversity and self-esteem and entitlement and all the other gibberish that doesn't amount to a hill of beans and is only making matters worse, not better.

But we don't acknowledge that evil is among us. Evil will only be eradicated when we stop making excuses for it and call it what it is. Only then will the East Side and every other neighborhood in America take itself back.